Random thoughts on random days


Social Technology
August 13, 2006, 12:41 pm
Filed under: Social Technology

I came across this post recently by Fred Stutzman who I can honestly say I have no idea how I came to have his blog in my reader. One of those 6 degrees things where I read a blog that connected to another blog that quoted someone else’s blog and well, you get the picture. He describes a talk he is giving about how the internet has changed the way we are connecting with each other and how this is driving changes in technology now and will in the future. He uses the term social technology which I realize describes all of the avenues of communication I have become engrossed in over the last few years. Starting with the Compuserve forums in the 80s through the explosion of social networks like MySpace and Flickr and the multitude of others coming on board it’s always been about connecting with each other. Weblogs give anyone an opportunity to express themselves and engage in conversations with complete strangers that may later become friends. It’s a stimulating time in communication and the technology that is helping fuel this social revolution. It’s where I want to learn and contribute technically. It’s where the conversation is best.

Just a bit of rambling on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Pittsburgh.

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RSS for small workgroups – a mini social network if you will
August 8, 2006, 3:41 pm
Filed under: RSS, Social Networks

I recently gave a talk at my company extolling the virtues of RSS for both reading web sites and doing research for and/or about our clients. Now I have been chirping and yapping about RSS for years and except for one or two people it fell on deaf ears because it was just too techie for my non-geek colleagues. This time, however, there was quite a bit of interest after I told them I scan a couple of hundred sites while eating breakfast. But when I showed them my technique of finding RSS feeds, loading them into my reader, subscribing to searches and all of that entails I could see I was losing my audience by the glazed-over-deer-caught-in-the-headlights faces that suddenly appeared in the room.

A couple of people wanted to be able to share feeds in sort of a group reader so that the effort of finding feeds could be spread among them. Which led to a question of commenting on the feeds internally. Which led to a question of shared bookmarks that is private to the group. Which got my juices flowing a bit.

I’m not sure but I’d be willing to bet there is some sort of enterprise RSS software system out there that does all of the above but is probably cost prohibitive for a workgroup of 5 or 6 people. So this has become my first project to try and build using the Ning platform I’ve become enamored with lately. I’ll keep you posted on my progress or lack thereof.

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Changes in latitude, changes in attitude
August 7, 2006, 8:53 am
Filed under: RSS

I’ve been on vacation at the beach recently and did a lot of walking and noodling along the water. I’ve been back over a week now and still have that slow and easy wish I was still there feeling. I could easily live at the beach year round and particularly enjoy the Delaware coast even when it’s cool in the fall.

I’ve decided to use this blog in a different way than I have done other blogging attempts in the past. I want to concentrate on what I’m passionate about: RSS, blogging (although you couldn’t tell by the lack of entries), emerging technologies as they relate to personal content and most importantly how they all change the way we communicate. I’m fascinated with these social networks although for the most part they are full of junk. But I also remember how bad desktop publishing was at it’s birth. Butt ugly!!

So… hopefully each day something new will appear on this site that maybe shows a little bit of what I’m working on or thinking about. Even if no one ever reads this blog I will have some record of what was interesting me that day.

P.S. I also intend to use Ning’s playground for developing my concepts. I think they have the right idea around social networks. As I once remember hearing “let a million blogs bloom” or something like that, Ning enables the same idea for “social networks”.

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